


Once

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Prophecy (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Gabriel's arrival in Hell</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dien

 

 

Gabriel awakes to nothing but darkness.

What he remembers is bundled with a thousand other memories at first, a Gordian knot made up from flashes of color, smells, sounds. He's disarmed, that he knows, in every meaning of the word and so it takes a while for him to be able to rip through the mass of images to the reality of _now_. He grabs hold onto the scent of fresh fear and follows its thread until the memory comes back to him in one crushing wave. The animal smell of terror in that ramshackle hut on the mountain, looking like nothing more to him than some desperate bolt hole. Thomas, Mary, Lucifer... 

Gabriel's hand flies to his chest but his fingers find his shirt only slightly creased, the solid mass of flesh underneath is undisturbed, intact and whole. He raises his other hand to his face and presses his fingers lightly against his eyelids, feeling them rise and fall as he blinks. He _is_ blinking, even if it makes no difference to what he can see. The darkness surrounding him isn't as oppressive as it is vast, a sense of great open space all around him. If he couldn't feel the hard, cold ground beneath him he might have been floating, or in free fall down some bottomless pit. 

_Pit_. Yes, Gabriel knows where he is and he lets out a great cry that is quickly leeched away to nothing in the massy darkness. Home, that's what Lucifer had said, the _last_ thing Lucifer had said. Home. The word is searing, a brand pressed against his mind that he's incapable of tearing away. He feels out the surface he's lying on, which is glassy smooth, then pushes himself upright and onto his knees. 

He stays like that for a long time. 

There's no way to know how long, if time even means anything at all here, but it doesn't matter anyway. Even why he's here, why Lucifer has left him alone like this, is trivial. Gabriel scoffs at the idea of sitting around full of dread or nervous anticipation or whatever else his wayward brother might be trying to evoke. 

But he has to sit. There's nowhere to go after all. So he sits and he marshals his will. He sits and he thinks on what brought him here, what will bring him _out_ of here. The latter is more important than the former, but for a while his thoughts seem to spin and turn, then unerringly fix themselves back onto Thomas. Sticking themselves to the ranting of that wannabe priest monkey, until he's forced to take a mental scalpel and dissect every poor, pathetic word that had spouted from his ignorant mouth.

The War is not a lie. Not about hate, not about jealousy, it is about what's right. What should be. What _must_ be. But it's a truth so far beyond a monkey's understanding...

He sews the argument back up like this, clean and tidy and after a while he begins to feel his strength flowing back to him. Slowly, very slowly and though he can still sense himself being subdued, muzzled by Lucifer's power over this domain, in time he manages to summon a light.

Soon after, he finds the staircase. 

It could have been a year it took him to climb to the top. Might have been a century or maybe just an hour, crawling carefully in the near dark up those narrow, slippery steps. 

And then there's light and heat, a wave of heat fierce enough to almost push him straight back into the dark. Gabriel stumbles out of the doorway at the top of the staircase and finds himself in a desert. 

It reminds him of Dudael, the Great Desert. He'd been there with Raphael once, long ago, Raphael who was now just another shrinking, creeping excuse for an angel. A fellow to Simon in the choice that he'd made and just like Simon too, in that he _used_ to be a creature of glory. Gabriel had been in Dudael with Raphael when he bound the apostate Azazel, one of the fallen who was probably there still, they'd been real _craftsmanship_ in Raphael's work back then after all. 

This desert has all the heat, all the bleached, bleakness of Dudael. The sun too large in the sky, shining ferociously with a white, unforgiving light. After the dark of the dungeon he's just emerged from it's like being blind all over again, but at least there's no wind to whip the sand up into skinning him. 

He screws up his eyes and waits for the spots on his vision to disappear. In the distance there is a city, shimmering in the heat. Skyscrapers, black clouds of smog billowing up into the sky in straight, dark clouds. He looks behind him and sees nothing but sand and he begins to walk that way. 

It's not long before he comes to the diner. Or at least, it doesn't feel long. The thought makes him narrow his eyes slightly and try to scent the air, standing and staring at the white washed little building, but if something _is_ pushing him here, there's nothing he can do about it. There's nowhere else to go and even though he's got exactly zero interest in hearing what Lucifer has to say (believes he could already script out exactly what that conversation is going to go like) it's something that's got to happen sooner or later. As he stands, a breeze starts to pick up. 

_

"There he is," Madge says. 

It's the diner back on Earth, the one he'd asked for directions in. Gabriel actually double-takes, turns to his side as if he expects to see Rachael standing there. Everything is exactly the same, if only the curtains had been drawn the illusion would have been perfect, but outside there's a sandstorm howling. 

Of course, when he turns back around it's Lucifer standing behind the counter, cleaning out a coffee mug. He's wearing the same, sky- blue waitress uniform that Madge had been wearing, but he's smiling. 

"Took your time," he says. 

Gabriel walks slowly away from the door, toward the countertop. There're careful steps, precisely balanced and ready to move in the face of any sudden attack. The cloth squeaks at Lucifer pushes it around the inside of the mug, but that's the only movement he's making. 

"You know you can't keep me here," Gabriel says. 

Lucifer ignores him, "I didn't want to rush things. It's not every day a little gift like this scurries onto my lap, all that anticipation..."

Gabriel waits to see if he's going to finish, but Lucifer just trails away dreamily and then shrugs. 

"So, this is Hell," Gabriel glances around the diner, raises an eyebrow slightly. "Impressive." 

Lucifer is completely unreadable and Gabriel's not afraid, but he can feel the tension in the room, like something is waiting to be triggered. When Lucifer places the mug onto the counter they both watch its descent, both listen to the quiet clink it makes as it settles. Gabriel wonders if he strikes first, if Lucifer might have underestimated him, he could bring him down. 

"Oh, Gabriel," Lucifer says, just as Gabriel is seriously considering going for his throat. "You don't know what you're saying, do you?" 

"So the brat who threw his toys out of the pram is going to talk to me about knowledge now," Gabriel says, like he's talking to no one.

He is looking though. Lucifer's got too much ego for the grinning mask he's wearing not to slip, just a little, and for a moment Gabriel can see the empty, rage glowing beneath it.

"You know what Hell is, don't you birdie?" Lucifer says, trying to plaster the smile back on but ending up with more of a snarl. 

Gabriel watches as Lucifer wrangles his smile back again, now with an extra layer of condescension pinned on top of it. His eyebrows knotted together in a pitying frown. Gabriel feels his lip start to curl in answer to that expression, being forced to listen to this like _anything_ Lucifer has to say actually matters, is almost beyond bearing. He doesn't bother to answer. 

Lucifer leans forward on the countertop, "I bet you're not feeling too bad, brother. Ever slip into a nice, lukewarm bath and realize that you can't tell the difference between the water and the air?" 

It takes a moment fro the meaning to slip in and then Gabriel does lunge, throws himself across the countertop, but either Lucifer is too quick or he's still too weak because he's not fast enough. Lucifer's hand is at his throat before he even has time to land and he's being slammed against one of the big, steel refrigerators. Lucifer's fingers squeezing around his neck before he's swallowed up by darkness again. 

-

When he wakes again, he can't move. 

"This is my kingdom," Lucifer says, from somewhere above him. His head is against the floor and he can't see anything but that, "Do you know what that means?" 

Gabriel tries to answer but he find he can't, it's like something is stuffing up his throat, packed down tightly against his vocal chords so he can't even begin to make a sound. He doesn't know what he was going to say but he thinks, _means you made one big mistake somewhere down the line_. 

"It means I make the rules, just like this," Lucifer says.

His voice is suddenly given back to him, Gabriel coughs, "So is this where you start with-" 

"Think I want to do the same sort of thing to you as you did to Simon?" Lucifer cuts in. 

Gabriel doesn't say anything. He presses his lips together. Yes, it had been what he was thinking. He doesn't know what Lucifer wants, can't tell. He'd always thought he'd known exactly how Lucifer's mind worked, not that he thought about it a lot, because it was simple wasn't it? 

He feels something hard nudging him in the ribs, but he still can't move to see.

"No. I told you Gabriel, you're a gift. It's the way you wear your heart on your sleeve like this. Simon was a real trooper, wasn't he? I think you'd like that, to be a real trooper too. If I hurt you like that, it'd just give you a sense of purpose." 

Gabriel laughs against the floor. "You have no idea." 

Footsteps echo around him. They can't still be in the diner, the floor is different for one thing and the echoes bounce up far too high. It's not cold, but it is...chilled. The absence of warmth rather than anything else. 

"About sweet, sweet, Simon? No. I don't." Lucifer says, and the voice is suddenly right next to his ear, "But I want to know, Gabriel, before we start. Seeing as I never got the chance...tell me what it feels like to kill the thing you love?" 

Gabriel rolls his eyes, wrinkles his nose. This, he doesn't understand. Maybe it's grandstanding, unoriginal and tedious, like Lucifer himself. Seems such a human thing to do, ask a question like that. The question is meaningless and it's not worth an answer but he can tell he's going to be stuck here until he plays along.

"Simon was collateral damage."

He'd meant it to come off sounding just as ridiculously human as Lucifer's words, but somehow it only sounded insincere. Angry. He hadn't' realized how angry he was until he heard the strain of it in his own voice, the way it made his words quick and careless.

They had to be careless because Lucifer was clapping his hands together like he'd just been shown a wonderful trick. His breath was tickling the hair at Gabriel's ears. Oddly intimate when his tone wasn't intimate at all, Lucifer was speaking in bright, jagged tones.

"There's no love left in Heaven, is there? You left Uziel to Simon, they left Simon to you. Where's the loyalty? Who'd have thought we were all brothers once." 

"Yeah, it's a real tragedy." 

Lucifer's tongue clicks against his teeth, admonishing him. He has his hand on the back of Gabriel's neck, tapping a fingernail against the top of his spine. Gabriel tries to move again, instinctively, but no matter how hard he wills himself, he can't budge an inch from where he's laying. 

"You remember the good old days, don't you Gabriel?" Lucifer says. "That's your rallying point. Well, I remember them too. I remember, that I outranked you. See, you're just like a monkey to me. I know the mind of God. I know that what you're fighting for isn't worth it." 

Gabriel wishes he could move just so he could show Lucifer what he really thinks of that, but he's left having to pour all his contempt into his voice alone. "A seduction speech, really? I've heard it before and it wasn't stale back then." 

"But you weren't fallen then," Lucifer sing-songs. "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket."

"I'm not fallen now!" Gabriel growls, his nonchalance shredded in the blink of an eye. 

Lucifer moves away from him, Gabriel hates that it feels like a great weight has been lifted off him, but it's true all the same. There's no time for relief though, as his body is jerked violently up onto his knees. Not by his own doing, his body moves of it's own accord, turned into a puppet-on-a-string. 

"Well, we'll see, won't we? Now before I introduce you to some old friends, I thought we might end this will a little traditional obeisance. You're all about tradition."

Gabriel can see Lucifer now. Not as he was on Earth, but as he was...in Heaven. Almost, just almost _exactly_ like that and it's jarring enough, sickening enough already. 

He doesn't have to look for long though. The insidious tendrils that have curled into his mind, pushing his will in ways it screams against, force him to bow his head. His voice stoppered again but his mouth given the command to kiss Lucifer's feet.

But as he hears the sound of other voices buzzing behind him ( _Beelzebub...?_ ) he promises himself he will make it through this. Lucifer is wrong. Timothy was wrong. He will show them. 

 


End file.
